There are many valuable metrics to provide insight that will allow you to dig deep into the performance of your marketing efforts. Let’s look at the 3 main metrics every inbound marketing manager will need to track.

Pro Tip: Using a tool such as Hubspot to create and monitor your marketing efforts is a time efficient and cost effective decision. Hubspot ties all of the campaign analytics together and presents them on an easy-to-use dashboard. There are other tools available such as Google Analytics to help monitor performance.

Traffic: Website, Blog & Landing Pages

The best indicator of successful marketing is in the organic traffic on your social media and website pages. ‘Organic’ means that the user found your content or website without the use of paid advertising or paid promotions. Monitor the organic traffic to the website. An increase in these metrics indicates that you are not only reaching, but providing information that resonates and adds value to your target audience.

Are you driving traffic to your blogs and landing pages? Distribution effectiveness in regards to email, social posts, and ads will show up as increased traffic to blogs and landing pages. Review blogs and landing pages with the highest and lowest visits. Blogs and landing pages with lower visits may need some love.

Conversion Rates

A ‘conversion’ in the world of marketing does not necessarily mean that a website visitor is converted into a paying customer. Conversion means that your landing pages or calls-to-action have resulted in a visitor taking the next step in the buyer’s journey.

Is your landing page converting? Conversion rates are one of the most important analytics to measure in an inbound marketing campaign. If you’re driving traffic to landing pages and not getting new leads, your landing page isn’t converting. Conversions are key! The conversion rates show how many people are taking the desired action on your page. If you are providing a webinar, the conversion would be how many people filled out the form to gain access to it. There are a few things to test when landing page’s conversion rates are low.

  • The Landing Page: Is your offer transparent? Can your customer clearly understand within 3 seconds what you are offering?
  • The CTA: Is it compelling? Is it placed where it is quickly noticed?
  • Advertising Strategy: Are you distributing your content through the right channels such as social media and email? Are you targeting a relevant audience? Are you spending your ad budget wisely?
  • The Offer: Is it relevant to this stage of the buyer’s journey?

Tweak only one thing at a time so you can be sure which change has made an impact. Record your results and use them for future campaigns.

Engagement

Engagement such as likes, comments, and shares on social platforms are indicators of interest from your audience. Engagement levels show you that your posts are relevant to your audience and that they resonate. Don’t forget to assess the post with the highest engagement and the post with the lowest engagement. To understand the results of these posts look at each one and ask a few questions about the post:

  • What does the text say?
  • What type of image did you use?
  • What landing page or blog does it link to?

Most likely you will notice some trends. Are posts with similar images getting more engagement? Are you seeing that posts with certain tones or language are receiving less engagement? Take note of each and make adjustments as needed.

Check and monitor these metrics weekly. If your campaign is longer than a month, perform a report for your team and analyze it together. Break down what is working and what adjustments should be made. Make a few tweaks and continue to monitor these three main metrics.

You can gain an in-depth look at your inbound marketing campaign’s performance through the Hubspot dashboard. Using a software tool such as Hubspot will allow you to view, in one place, the effects of the changes made to your campaign, along with detailed analytics. In addition, you’ll receive support from your marketing agency and HubSpot to ensure a successful campaign.